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Nutrition and Disease

Early Soy Exposure via Maternal Diet Regulates Rat Mammary Epithelial Differentiation by Paracrine Signaling from Stromal Adipocytes^1–3,

⁴ Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center, ⁵ Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and ⁶ Department of Pediatrics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR 72202

Diet-mediated changes in transcriptional programs that promote the early differentiation of the mammary gland may lead to reduced breast cancer risk. The disparity in adult breast cancer incidence between Asian women and Western counterparts is attributed partly to high soy food intake. Here, we conducted genome-wide profiling of mammary tissues of weanling rats exposed to soy protein isolate (SPI) or control casein (CAS) via maternal diet to evaluate the contribution of early exposure on mammary gene expression. Of the identified 18 up- and 39 downregulated genes with SPI relative to CAS, a subset was associated with lipid metabolic pathways, consistent with reduced mammary adipocyte size and suggesting stromal adipocyte-specific genomic changes. Female offspring of rats fed SPI tended to have fewer terminal end buds (P = 0.06) and had significantly lower body weight and abdominal fat mass. To demonstrate the functional consequence of SPI-mediated adipocyte metabolic changes on neighboring mammary epithelium, the expression of in vivo regulated genes in 3T3-L1 adipocytes treated with soy isoflavone genistein and effects of the resultant conditioned medium (CM) on the differentiation of HC11 mammary epithelial cells were evaluated by quantitative RT-PCR and/or Western immunoblots. In differentiated 3T3-L1, genistein decreased fatty acid synthase and stearoyl-CoA desaturase and increased hydroxysteroid 11-β dehydrogenase 1 expression. CM from genistein-treated adipocytes had higher adiponectin levels and augmented prolactin-induced, glucocorticoid-regulated β-casein levels. These findings suggest that soy-associated components, by targeting mammary adipocytes, alter paracrine signaling to enhance mammary epithelial differentiation, with important implications for the prevention of breast cancer associated with obesity and obesity-related diseases.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: simmenrosalia{at}uams.edu.

Manuscript received 19 December 2008. Initial review completed 22 January 2009. Revision accepted 13 February 2009.

Published online 25 March 2009.